Not too much different for this release, but a couple of changes just the same. While working on the mobile versions of SharpMT, I found a couple of irksome things in the code base and decided to clean them up with this release. I also thought a bump in version number would be welcome considering there was a 3.2, 3.2.1, and 3.2.1 redux release already – having said that, the changes I made for Windows Vista Beta 2 have been incorporated with this release.

This is the first release of Pocket SharpMT after I created Phone SharpMT; the biggest change for this won’t even be visible! Both mobile editions of SharpMT share a large amount of code across the different platforms, and that’s the whole point of the Compact Framework. Of course, as I started to shuttle some Pocket PC code to the Smartphone project, I discovered a number of things that could be tweaked. So I tweaked them.

One visible feature that has come to this release is the always-on Exit menu item. For a very, very long time I’ve adhered to the “don’t close” architecture of the Pocket PC, but well, I’ve had enough of it. SharpMT saves its changes on exit; hard to count on that getting called at the right time, so I always included an option of showing the Exit menu item. Starting with this release, the Exit item is there for new users; the option to turn it off is also out of the Options dialog. The registry key for toggling the menu is still there, but you’ll need a registry editor to change it… trust me: it’s easier to just have the exit menu item there.

First official release of Phone SharpMT and pre-release versions had already included the updates made to Pocket SharpMT. This recompilation has a couple of fine tuning changes and it now treats the Exit menu item the same way Pocket SharpMT does… it’s always there and the only way to turn it off is via the registry. Makes for a much better experience for new users.

As for PPC, there’s isn’t one… the most you can count on, on the PPC, is being told to Hybernate OR “System low on memory, so you should close”. No state of open (once opened) or close (without putting your own Exit in).

Anyway, that’s all just “Style Issue”. With my Exit item I won’t qualify for a “Designed for Windows Mobile 5.0” badge, but seeing as I’m not going to spend $$$ to put one on a box (when I don’t even has a box!)

I just loaded this on my HTC Wizard – Cingular 8125, loaded with Service Pack 1 of the .NET Compact Framework.

The software works, with one problem. When I use the phone in landscape mode with the real keyboard, the virtual on-screen keyboard pops up everytime I type anything, there’s no way to turn it off and keep it that way. When the virtual keyboard is popped up in landscape mode it actually sits on top of the dialogs in PocketSharp, so you can’t see the entry that you’re typing.

In other applications the act of using the physical keyboard will automatically disable the on-screen one.

Beyond that seems like a great tool. It would be nice to be able to edit existing published posts – I didn’t see a way to do that, I haven’t tried the desktop version to see if it supports that.

There should be a way to turn off the SIP: go over to properties and there should be a checkbox for it… key for ppl with actual keyboards.

If not lemme know… I haven’t seen a “auto-off-if-physical-keyboard” notification but I coulda missed it in all the revisions between version… I personally like to run without the SIP popping up all the time on it’s own, which is why the “Auto-show” SIP option is there.

That did the trick, Thanks! I’m new to movable type, and I thought because that option was on the server tab it had something to do with MT. It might be nice to have a separate PPC preferences tab to reduce confusion – control the exit pref, SIP, default save directory etc. Not a big deal though.

I just did a clean install of MT 3.3. I had been using 3.2, but decided it was so trashed that I’d be better off starting from scratch rather than updating.

I was using SharpMT (3.3.0.0) before, so it was already installed. I just changed the directory and sign on information, but now I can’t get SharpMT to sign in. I get “Error connecting to blog server.” I know I have all of the information correct and I haven’t changed servers, just MT versions, so it shouldn’t be a server issue.

I have changed blog names and user ID, if that makes any difference? I didn’t know if this information is stored somewhere and may be causing the issue. I tried deleting the RandyRants.com Application Data folder hoping that might resolve the issue, but I notice my information remained in the program.

It would be more likely that the new version would work with the old settings, especially if they hadn’t been removed and if MT hasn’t changed… there were no changes made to the network modules for this release – not for a long while in fact.

I don’t know what you mean by changing blog names or user ID: did you change them on the server and now have to change them for SharpMT? If so, then the MT server HAS changed – I would verify that the new user account has access to post via XML-RPC. Also, if you could turn on logging and show me what it’s sending (removing the user id and password for your protection) as I’m interested in seeing what the error message from the server is.

As to the values stored by SharpMT, some of them are stored in the Application Data directory but other data is stored in the registry. I wouldn’t go digging through there to remove everything, though – at least not the Text Filters. With TypePad, there’s an ongoing error with their install that prevents access to that data via XML-RPC – I don’t know if MT’s most recent versions have the same problem.

I totally wiped the old MT install from the server, started with nice, clean directories. In doing the reinstall (this time on MySQL rather than Berkeley), I chose a different user name and password than with the old install. That’s all I meant.

I just tried to access XML-RPC without SharpMT and sure enough my ID/password combo was rej–

DOH!

That’s not just a typed word. I actually just said it.

I forgot that the Web Services password was a randomly-generated string. It had previosuly been the same password I use for MT, so that’s what I’d been trying. I must have known that at one time, since I presumably changed it on 3.2, but that was a loooong time ago now.

Well I do know that the Cingular 8125 is a Pocket PC based phone, so you’ll have better luck with Pocket SharpMT instead of Phone SharpMT – I wouldn’t have made it that confusing if I could have avoided it, but that’s what they call the phones…

If that still doesn’t work plz let me know but in all honestly I haven’t seen that error before, so I’d be working in the dark either way…

If it helps — I just got a Cingular 8125 this weekend — so not much software on it. I have no trouble running either, but do get the old error message running the Phone verson, so I went back to Pocket version.

Especially after another program that checks reported I needed the Pocket version of their software.

FYI: Your notes on the SIP really helped too. I need to learn to read support stuff BEFORE I run the software :-)

Um… yer all going to hurt me, but I’m 99% certain that SSL isn’t support, out of the box. Truth be told, the only reason why the desktop has it is because the network stack supports it… I still have to see if that’s available in the CF – if so it’ll be a .1 release, but no promises… sorry to be so evasive on this too – I’m just under a heavy workload lately between work and work and class and work. And did I mention work?

I just tried installing PocketSharpMT on my 8525 and I get a .net compact framework error. Where do I get an updated version of the .net compact framework (and why does an app that was updated before my PPC was manufactured require a newer version of .net? Is this a spurious error? Or is WM5 already outdated?

Heh. It’s funny b/c the .NET CF is on it’s own lifecycle… I don’t even know if it’s included in WM6, but it certainly runs on WM5 and WM6. And sorry about forcing you to reboot, too – if I could distribute the CAB file I would, but it’s only available via a PC-based install.

Hi – I’m trying to use the Sharp MT to update my Typepad travel blog when I’m offline…..but I can’t seem to insert pictures when offline – am I doing something wrong or can you only insert pictures in a draft if you’re working online?

Well. there’s a couple of things… for images to be uploaded, you have to be connected – just the nature of uploading the images themselves. Having said that, you can always insert tags for IMG on your own, and upload the images later – you can even make custom tags for specific IMG tag formats, if you wanted to. HTH!

I wonder whether you are planning to support multi-language posting via SharpMT. Usually I write my posts in Russian, but unfortunately the only thing I get in my blog after posting using Pocket SharpMT is a row of “?” symbols. The same thing is with categories – when the program downloads’em from the blog, they also become just “questions”…

Furthermore, maybe it’s better to localize the interface of SharpMT, ah? I can do this in Russian and Spanish, but I need to know how to do it :)

The language stuff with #MT is weird. First and foremost, the XML-RPC interface doesn’t accept non-ASCII characters. That pretty much rules out most of the world. For the Latin based languages, I put in a hack a few versions ago that converts characters to an encoded HTML value… it’s a total hack, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve had Japanese and Chinese drafts stored on the HDD, show up in the UI, the whole thing – but the send fails at the server level.

Having said that, I haven’t done a thing for localization of the UI: after all, what is the point, if the language isn’t supported by the server?

Lastly, nope: SharpMT isn’t open source. I’ve considered it but there’s a few things that have made me hesitate. One is that there’s some ID’s that are mine and mine alone – blame MovableType and Amazon for requiring a sign up for their Web API’s – and then there’s the question of maintaining the code base… or dealing with one-offs that end up in my inbox…

Well, there is an upload path in the Options… I think it’s on “tab” 4 (which will look different depending on your device – should be off the menu and/or soft key.)

Anyway, I can’t speak for Drupal but MT doesn’t “allow” you to upload to just any old directory – at least my version of it doesn’t – so everything gets uploaded relative to MT. So from what I’m seeing you can try setting your image upload path to /files. That would set the IMG URL properly but it might NOT upload it properly – that would be up to Drupal (and I have no idea what that does).

Randy, having problems connecting to my mt blog; after entering my server info and tapping the refresh button I get a “invalid login” box. I can login to my server from the web, but not from pocket sharpmt. I am running mt 3.44 and my phone is the Sprint HTC-Mogul(ppc-6800)running wm6.

That’s odd – I was just using this yesterday, but with MT 3.33… if the CGI path is right in SharpMT it should be fine – the only other thing I can think of is that Sprint is blocking the user agent from their WLAN network maybe? Have you tried it with WiFi or via the AC cable?

I tried it yesterday while phone was being charged. Have since tried wifi with phone turned off and I get the same error messege. Have checked and double checked my MT server settings and they are fine – checked file access/permissions in the MT folder, everything is configured correctly.

Well, let me be more specific. The .NET Framework does. The file system does. So I enabled Unicode throughout the entire system (at least on the desktop version – didn’t get a chance to try mobile) and it worked fine. Had Korean and Japanese loading and saving and displaying almost without any effort.

And then I tried to post it to the server.

I don’t know who to point the finger at but it simply doesn’t work. I don’t know if it’s the XML-RPC layer, the version of XML-RPC that MT/TypePad uses, or the modules of MT/TypePad that is blocking all but ANSI, but it does. Realizing that I couldn’t push UTF-8 or UTF-16 over the wire, I pulled out all of the Unicode support. The only workaround I found only works for Latin-based languages and even with that I just encode it using HTML before sending it over the air.

Long answer to a simple question, sorry, but I at least wanted you to know that I TRIED to support it but couldn’t make it available.

Hi! I tried to install this on my Mogul HTC 6800 w/ sprint, and for some reason I can’t comprehend, my keyboard sticks in “function” mode when i try to type in the title and entry fields so I get numbers instead of letters. Has anyone else seen this? If so, how did you fix it?

Hi Randy! Thanks for the program =D I’m just starting my WordPress blog, but this has already been very very helpful!

One thing I haven’t been able to find on my own is how to add new categories from within Pocket SharpMT. As I said, my blog’s just starting so I don’t have a whole lot of categories; I’d prefer to be able to create them along with my posts.

Sadly, no: the API’s that MT and TypePad expose don’t offer the ability to add categories… well, they didn’t when I wrote it – even if they do now, none of the SharpMT clients support it… it’s one of the things you’ll have to set up ahead of time on your server. Once they’re there, you can refresh the list on the client… HTH!

I love your app! I write for Pocketnow.com and would love to give you a review, but I want to make some things work first. I have been testing this on my own blog MikeBenton.org and run into a problem with images.

I’ve been around the block a time or two with code and php and all that jazz. I’m not an expert by any means though.

So here is the problem I am having and I am sure it’s an easy fix for you.

I use wordpress on my personal blog. It uses xmlrpc.php instead of CGI-BIN. No problems there, your app works fine with that. However, the xmlrpc code determines where the uploaded photos go to, seems like regardless of the setting I choose in wordpress. Okay fine I’ll leave the wordpress setting alone.

From SharpMT we are given an option in the Tools > Options > Images for an ‘upload image path’ I am assumed at first this was meant to tell SharpMT where to put the image but then I noticed it was appending it to the HTML code.

So that part was great.

HOWEVER what is happening is that when the image is uploaded to the server, SharpMT (or the xmlrpc.php) is prefixing the file name with whatever is in the ‘upload image path’ field, minus the /’s. So no matter what I put I can’t win.

The best I can do is leave that field blank and manually type ‘wp-content/uploads/’ into the html code for the img url.

Can you fix this? If you need a copy of the xmlrpc.php file I am using I can send that to you. Please let me know

Thanks for the interest in SharpMT! I read through the comments and there’s really not much I can do about it. SharpMT is first and foremost a MT/TypePad client so all of the features have been tweaked and fine tuned for that platform. Other platforms, such as WordPress, use API’s that are similar to MT/TP but they aren’t exactly the same, as you’ve already discovered. Having said that, the permissions issue is that of WordPress: SharpMT doesn’t upload files via FTP – it uses an upload API that is included in the XML-RPC based APIs, so if the permissions aren’t being set correctly, that’s happening on the blog engine side of things. Same thing with regards to where things get saved… I know MT/TP has some parameters that dictate where uploaded pictures get stored – WordPress may have the same options.

Great app! I originally installed version 4 and was wondering about the images and html formatting that was discussed in the blog and couldn’t find it. Then, checked back and installed 3.3 and found it.

One request. Would it be possible to STOP the automatic virtual keyboard pop up every time I go to any menu or page in SharpMT? This is annoying as I don’t always use the virtual keyboard (since I have a Treo 750) and have to keep tapping to close it so that I can get at the rest of the screen.

Any chance of putting a format toolbar so that I don’t have to tap on the Format to then select it (icons to designate bold, italic, link, etc)? Also, it would be so nice to be able to view the html rendered page so that while I’m writing the draft that I can view how it will look before publishing it.

Strange that I couldn’t (maybe I didn’t look too hard) find the formatting in version 4. I’m okay with 3.3 so I’ll stick with it.

Actually, some of the earlier versions of the UI had a toolbar, but there got to be so many commands that it became painful to look at and ended up being less than useful, so I scrapped it in exchange for the menu. One thing that is there for tags is the custom tag bit – I know with the desktop, you can add up to 10 tags – I probably didn’t allow 10 on the Pocket version due to space, but there’s gotta be some custom HTML tags that can be worked out in there :)

Otherwise, some of the things “missing” from the desktop to Pocket/Phone version centered around the shift in frameworks. For example, there’s no DateTime picker exposed to the Compact Framework (and no idea why) – somethings I worked around and others I simply didn’t. The preview of the HTML would be one of those things I didn’t feel compelled to work on because I never had a burning need to look at it on a device – the Pocket/Phone version always felt more like a Moblog client than a full blown blog client.

Having said all of that, this is why I released the source code: other coders can easily get the source and grow the project… I’m pretty much “done” with it at this point.

Thanks very much for explaining yourself on this and letting me know. I mostly blog from the computer and rely on the web based blogging clients, although I actually type all the formatting and codes by hand since I’m better at typing than dealing with WYSIWYG since it’s hard to read when I didn’t type it out myself.

I want to use a mobile blogging client that will allow me to blog when I’m not at the computer so it would be helpful for me to have the basic formatting available rather than typing (since I’m using the Treo 750 with the tiny keypad). Unlike the computer, I can’t type like I do with my fingers so it would be helpful to limit the typing.

Thanks very much for your app. It does help a lot now that I can blog small posts wherever I have Wi-Fi.

I’ve been using your Pocket Sharp program over a satellite phone connection and it worked great, but all of the sudden I’m having troubles with it. It still works when posting text, updating categories, etc. but keeps timing out when trying to upload an image (only 30-50k in size). Any ideas as to what settings to check on the pda or the xml-rpc code? Or do you think uninstalling and re-installing on the pda would help? When I connect via activesync and a pc, it works fine.

If it’s an all of a sudden thing, I’d say that there’s been a change in either your blog instance or your connection (and quite probably the connection.) The client code hasn’t changed at all, so there’s no way that that can suddenly stop working – I’m betting that they’ve done something strange to the satellite phone connection, i.e. changed a proxy or gateway setting… I’d give them a call and see what they say.

Installed your program on my Glofiish X500 with Windows Mobile 6.1. When I setting up the program and tapping “refresh” I getting error without text. If I change URL by writting in “http://” prefix I get an error with text “Error connecting to host”. I have standalone wordpress blog (wordpress version – 2.8.4)

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